


Remembrances

by erunamiryene



Series: Heroics, Shenanigans, War Stories, Magic - Tales From Thedas [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3007391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erunamiryene/pseuds/erunamiryene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen reflects on his interactions with the Hero of Ferelden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembrances

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly headcanon for my canon DA universe, but it didn't fit in with my main fic, so I decided to post it as a standalone. Inspired partly by the nifty Cullen Romance Mod for DA:O.

The common room was filled with templars waiting for the evening briefing. The soft clank of metal as those in armor shifted on their feet was the only sound. “There’s a Harrowing tonight,” Knight-Captain William said, standing in the front of the room. “Cullen, you’re going to take this one.”

“Who’s going through their Harrowing?” someone asked.

William consulted the parchment he was holding. “A … Caris Amell,” he replied. “Cullen, are you ready?”

Cullen, feeling his stomach drop, very carefully kept his face neutral. “Yes, Knight-Captain.” He saluted.

The knight-captain surveyed the room. “If no one has any other business, day shift is released and night shift can take their posts.”

Murmured conversations resumed as the templars filed out. Cullen turned when someone touched his shoulder. 

Bryce, the closest thing Cullen had to a best friend in the tower, was standing there. “Hey, man.”

Cullen nodded at the other templar. “Bryce.”

Bryce leaned in, lowering his voice. “That mage tonight, isn’t that your friend?”

“Yeah.”

A long sigh. “... that’s rough.”

“Yeah.” Cullen nodded.

“You want me to volunteer for it?”

“No. I can’t shirk my duties.”

There was a pause.

“You okay?”

“... yeah.”

They stood in companionable silence for a long moment.

“I’m sure she’ll do fine,” Cullen eventually said. He remembered when he had arrived at the Circle at Kinloch Hold two years ago, fresh from templar training. He’d been given door duty on the apprentices’ level, and a flame-haired, blue-eyed girl had stopped by on her way to the library.

“Hello,” she’d said, awkwardly clutching two large books under one arm in order to hold out her other hand.

“Oh, um … hello,” he’d replied, unsure of the protocol for shaking hands with mages but deciding to err on the side of manners.

“Welcome to our Circle - well, your Circle now too, I suppose. You’re a recent transfer, right?”

“Y-yes. I just … recently took my vows.”

“I’m Caris.” She’d smiled. “Anyway, I just wanted to welcome you. I hope you like it here. We’re kind of a stuffy bunch, and they make us do too much reading -” she’d made a face “- but it’s a nice place to be, as these sorts of things go.”

He’d blushed from his neck to his ears; she’d pretended not to notice. “Th-thank you … Caris.”

She’d smiled at him again and continued on her way, and over the next couple of years they’d ended up friends … well, as close as a mage and a templar could get to friendship without drawing the ire of the knight-commander and the first enchanter, anyway. 

Bryce startled him out of his reverie. “You coming to dinner?”

Cullen shook his head. “No. I think I’m going to visit the chapel before the rite.”

\-- 

Cullen spent the entire Harrowing praying as he kept watch. Praying she’d make it. Praying he wouldn’t have to kill his friend. Praying for forgiveness because he would do his duty if it came to that. And finally, offering a silent prayer of thanks as Caris’s Harrowing concluded without incident.

First Enchanter Irving appeared at his side. “Can you carry her back down to the apprentice quarters, please?” 

“Of course, First Enchanter.”

He made his way through the halls as quietly as possible, cradling her sleeping form.

\-- 

The next day, Caris found him in the hallway of the senior enchanters’ quarters, waving at him as she finished the last bite of a sweet roll. “Hello, Cullen.”

“Hello, Caris. They, uh … picked me as the templar to strike the killing blow if you … became an abomination. I-It was nothing personal, I swear! I, uh … I’m just glad you’re all right. You know.”

Caris raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize. Well, you all had your helmets on, so I suppose I wouldn't have.” She grinned mischievously. “I thought all templars were required to like killing mages.”

He knew she was baiting him - they’d had similar conversations a number of times - but he couldn’t help himself. “Maybe some. But not me. It’s my duty to hunt down apostate mages ... but I do so with a heavy heart.”

“So you really would have done it?"

“I would have felt terrible about it. I, uh … I was praying it wouldn’t come to that … you know, during your Harrowing. But I serve the Chantry and the Maker, and I will do as I’m commanded.”

Caris nodded. “I know.” She paused. “I shouldn’t be distracting you from your duties.”

“Oh, you’re not distracting. I mean … you are … but-” He stopped, realizing what he’d just said. “You’re not. We can talk anytime.”

Something between them seemed to … shift.

Instead of a quip or her usual cheery farewell, she looked uncharacteristically nervous. “Are you busy?”

He wasn’t, but her acting nervous made him nervous. “Uh … yes. We should probably talk another time.”

She looked around the hall, clearly committing to some course of action. “But … “ She bit her lip. “This is important.”

As he scanned the hallway, he already knew he was making a bad decision. But she smelled like vanilla and spice, her eyes were flashing, and most of his common sense thought processes had been co-opted by the raging erection pressing against his armor.

They ducked into the empty room and regarded each other for a long moment … and then she threw her arms around him and roughly kissed him, going up on tiptoe to press against him as much as she was able. He circled her waist with one arm and carefully ran his other hand through her flaming red hair, inwardly cursing his gauntlets.

She tasted like sugar, and her hair fluttered against his cheek, and he knew he’d remember this for the rest of his life.

\-- 

Cullen had seen Caris again during the unending nightmare that was Uldred’s takeover of Kinloch Hold; he tried hard to not remember any of that, even now.

One memory  
_her unmistakable hair that had to be her_

led to another  
_Bryce shrieking as he died, burned to death by a mage he’d played cards with_

and another  
_Knight-Captain William, murdered by Uldred_

and another  
_a new templar, he’d arrived the day before, cut down by an apprentice_

and another  
_the deathly silence that overtook the tower, even worse than the screaming that had preceded it_

and another  
_the grotesquely smiling face of an abomination dangling his sin before him again_

and another  
_sure he was the only one left all he could do was pray to Andraste and hope for the end_

and another  
_why wouldn’t the end ever come was this the punishment for that single indiscretion_

One of the times she turned out to be real and not just a cruel illusion summoned by the mages, though perhaps her actually being there was the cruelest trick of all, and he begged her to kill all the mages. She’d looked at him, blue eyes shining with tears, and after a long moment had finally whispered that she could not.

And he’d hated her for it. Just another mage, protecting other mages, no matter what those mages did, no matter who they hurt.

\-- 

He’d later heard - he couldn't remember if it was while he was at the Greenfell chantry or after he'd arrived in Kirkwall - that Caris had killed the Archdemon and ended the Blight, then disappeared. 

“And I never got a chance to apologize,” he muttered to himself the night his memory dredged all this up; he stood in the chantry surveying their impromptu war table, spending far too long studying the map of Ferelden.

“Cullen.” Leliana was in the doorway. “You've been looking at that map so long that you're talking to yourself. Come on. Let’s go talk.” 

She told him a few stories of her travels with the Warden that night in the Haven tavern, and - in a somewhat uncharacteristic moment of honesty - revealed that Caris hadn’t held what he’d asked for during Uldred’s takeover of Kinloch Hold against him.

“She understood what you’d gone through; even considered your request for moment.”

He was stunned. “Maker, if she’d _done_ it ….”

“But she didn’t, because she knew you wouldn’t have asked, were you in your right mind.” She paused as they paid their tabs. “Caris wore the pendant you’d given her every day, even the day we fought the Archdemon,” Leliana said before they parted ways for the evening. “She always considered you a friend. I thought you should know.”

“I … thank you, Leliana.” 


End file.
